Food companies should think about applying design to more areas of business than just packaging, say Helmut Traitler, Nestlé’s former vice president of innovation partnerships, and two other experts in business and product design.

On a mission to find out what food will be like 20 years from now, journalist Josh ­Schonwald visits scientific labs, checks out famous chef Alice Waters’s “microfarm,” and explores the new role that technologies such as genetic engineering could play in feeding the world’s growing population.

The Future Market(website) What will a grocery store look like in 2065? New York–based consultancy Studio Industries plans to open a pop-up supermarket this summer to show how technologies like hydroponic gardens, cultured meats, and biodegradable packaging could one day shape store design.

Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Michael Moss uncovers how the processed-food industry—a trillion-dollar business in the United States—formulates and markets foods, manipulating their sugar, salt, and fat content to keep people coming back for more. This best-selling book won the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing and Literature last year.

The latest food craze in Silicon Valley doesn’t resemble food at all. It’s Soylent, a powdered drink mix designed to eliminate the hassle of making food by providing all the nutrients that people need to survive. The author explains how Soylent evolved from an experiment in three young entrepreneurs’ San Francisco apartment to a consumer product, and she tries it out for herself.

The world’s population is on track to grow by 38 percent by 2050, and climate change is making it harder to feed the planet. In this cover story, MIT Technology Review’s editor, David Rotman, explains how genetically modified foods can help.

Fresh food has been losing flavor and nutrients for more than 50 years, says journalist Mark Schatzker. Now people are turning to processed foods that re-create those flavors without the nutritional benefits that foods once provided naturally.